Unhygienic floors and countertops are a dilemma in the house as well as at the workplace and can pose many health and safety risks. Almost all private households and public facilities such as restaurants, hospitals, cafeterias, prisons, schools, and manufacturing facilities require clean and hygienic work areas. Clean and hygienic work areas improve health and reduce safety risks.
A study reported in the December 2005 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine indicated that endotoxins associated with certain gram negative bacteria commonly found in household dust pose a significant risk for asthma. According to the authors, inhalation exposure to endotoxins is common in homes from sources such as dust (among other things). Peter S. Thorne, Ph.D., of the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and his associates evaluated 831 homes selected to represent the demographic characteristics of the U.S. population. The investigators took 2,552 house dust samples from five locations within the homes, including bedroom floors, bedding, family room floors, sofa surfaces, and kitchen floors. The authors found the strongest relationship between asthma, asthma medications, and wheezing came from endotoxin levels in bedroom floor and bedding dust. However, the effects were observed only in adults and not in children. Moreover, the investigators also noted that the endotoxin concentrations were highest in kitchen and living room floor dust. The investigators reported a mean concentration of endotoxin in kitchen floor dust that was 2.3-fold higher than the mean concentration of endotoxin in bedroom floor dust and 4.3-fold higher mean concentration of endotoxin in bedding dust. Clearly, effectively removing and eliminating dust and other small particulate and contaminants from hard surfaces can improve health conditions.
As far as safety risks are concerned, many slips can occur when floors are unclean. Slips are one of the most common causes of major injuries at work and the costs to industry are significant. Almost all slips happen when floors are dirty or wet, contaminated with water, oil, food, dust, lint, sand, plastic or any other debris effecting floor friction. In many nations, there are legal requirements that require floor surfaces to be suitable. Attention to preventing contamination from ever happening in the first place is clearly preferable and having the necessary tools that enable one to monitor contamination is just as important. Even very small amounts of contamination (one piece of small plastic or patch of dust) can have dramatic consequences depending upon the environment. Because of this, floor cleaning is a necessity.
Cleaning is very important in controlling many issues as evidenced by the 100+ billion dollar U.S. Commercial and Residential Cleaning Market. America purchases many products including vacuum cleaners, brooms, mops, dust pans, SWIFFERS® and cleansing chemicals. However, one shortcoming of current methods is that no matter how much cleaning gets done, the user is never truly assured that the surface is thoroughly contaminate free. Improving the current cleaning procedures and methods used by people and cleaning services is needed.
There's currently no effective method to help with quality control. Some vacuum cleaners have particle sensors that claim the ability to detect a clean surface. Also, many vacuums have a built in light that can illuminate a large area around the vacuum. These built in lights may aid in detecting floor contaminates however the illumination provide is often improperly directed and insufficiently focused to effectively detected and/or illuminate small contaminates on the floor. For example, the light source on vacuum cleaners typically focuses from above the floor being vacuumed thereby illuminating a wide area with a dispersed or diffused beam. In addition, when vacuuming hard surfaces, many vacuum manufacturers recommend and offer the ability to turn off the brush bar engine to avoid damaging bare floors and in doing so turns off the built in light as well.
Prior methods used for detecting contaminates on hard surfaces are not very effective. For example, the common “white glove” test only checked a small area. Often the contaminants are tiny, transparent or camouflaged (e.g. clear plastic, glass and hair) and are hard to detect on a “white glove” inspection. Natural light, ceiling lights, wall lights, table lamps, chandeliers, etc, also are not effective for locating small particulate matter on hard surfaces because the light is too diffused and/or not focused in a proper manner to illuminate small particulates and contaminants such as dirt and dust particles.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus that can be used to easily detect contaminates on hard surfaces and help avoid many health and safety risks caused by the contaminates. The present invention overcomes these drawbacks and fills these and other needs.